


Repeat, Delete

by hongbab



Category: VIXX
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 17:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9774032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongbab/pseuds/hongbab
Summary: Jaehwan reaches out, winds an arm around Sanghyuk’s neck and pulls him as close as he can, hugging him so tightly it must be inconvenient, but he doesn’t care, because that’s the least Sanghyuk deserves and the most Jaehwan can give.





	1. Repeat, Delete

Jaehwan watches as the train starts to move slowly, lazily like a giant snake that feels too heavy after devouring an animal five times its size. He keeps his hands in the pockets of his jeans, standing on the platform, almost dangerously close to the edge.

Jaehwan is alone. He hears the buzzing of the crowd somewhere far away from him, but he doesn’t turn his head to see where the people are. All he knows is that there is no one besides him on the platform.

He wasn’t seeing anyone off to the station, nor is he going anywhere–-at least, he doesn’t think he is, so he’ll just stay still until the train disappears from his view, and then… then, he will probably wait for another one to come, but he doesn’t dwell much on what he should do after he’s done doing practically nothing. It’s no use pondering. It doesn’t matter, anyway.

This train is a curious thing to look at. It’s not only the fact that it’s painted purple (and trains are rarely purple as far as Jaehwan knows), but also that the blinds are pulled down in front of all the windows. Jaehwan watches them flitting by, not thinking about anything in particular until the train slows down a little, confusing him entirely. He turns towards the end of it, or at least where he supposes it has to be, and sees a window with the blind up.

There’s someone inside, someone looking out the window, looking at Jaehwan, and when the coach finally gets close enough for Jaehwan to see the face of the person in it, he feels his throat getting dry. Two big, round, dark eyes bore into him, a small nose pressed almost all the way to the windowpane and ten tiny fingers spread out on it, making their owner look like a caged animal. The only indication that he is not entirely suffering is the little, dimpled smile he flashes at Jaehwan.

The train accelerates again, and Jaehwan begins to move: he jogs next to the vehicle, trying to reach the window, to look at the person behind it some more or to mouth something to him, he’s not quite sure what he wants to do but he wants  _him–-_ no he doesn’t, because he can’t–-

Jaehwan runs so fast his muscles ache and he’s struggling for air. He still manages to gather some energy to cry out a name, to shout and scream as loudly as he can to the person on the train: “Hongbin! Hongbin!”

There’s a slight nudge on his back and Jaehwan’s eyes suddenly open.

He’s heaving and trembling as he looks at the wall in front of him, the name ‘Hongbin’ echoing in his mind as he feels the nudge again and realizes that it’s Sanghyuk’s nose against the top of his spine.

It takes him some time to get himself together enough to get out of the bed as cautiously as he can so as not to wake Sanghyuk. The younger does murmur something into his pillow and sighs, but he doesn’t open his eyes as he rolls onto his other side and pulls his blanket up to his chest, hugging it like a kid would hug his teddy bear.

Jaehwan pads out of the bedroom and makes it into the bathroom to stand under lukewarm water in the shower. He hates the damned plumbing of the apartment complex he lives in; taking a hot shower is usually only a dream for him. However, for some reason he doesn’t even think about complaints this morning when he stands with his chin to his chest, his eyes closed, feeling the water drops slide down his face, and does nothing to actually achieve some kind of personal hygiene.

He thinks about his dream; Hongbin, actually. He thinks about his eyes and his smile, his small hands on the train window and his black hair, the curve of his ears and the tip of his nose… and feels miserable. He almost starts thinking about why he suddenly had a dream about Hongbin after all this time, but then he hears a loud bang as the wind slams the bedroom door closed–Sanghyuk forgot to close it before he opened the kitchen window again.

He scrubs at his skin with as much effort as he can to make his thoughts and memories of Hongbin disappear, and when he’s done (half angry and half sad but just as  _dirty_  as before), he puts on fresh clothes, brushes his teeth and goes into the kitchen. Sanghyuk is chewing a piece of Nutella bread with his legs crossed as he sits on top of the chair, and he looks up at Jaehwan with puffy eyes.

“Mornin’, hyung,” he says in a sleep-deep voice.

“Good morning,” Jaehwan smiles, ruffling Sanghyuk’s hair as he passes him, stepping to the cupboard to take his cereal and a bowl out of it.

He sits down at the table with his breakfast, and considers telling Sanghyuk that it’s not exactly healthy stuffing his face with chocolaty things at 7 in the morning, but they’ve been over that conversation a few times and it always ended with Sanghyuk pointing out the fact that Jaehwan snacks whenever, wherever and whatever he can all day.

Sanghyuk finishes his breakfast and sets to brew some coffee, elbowing on the counter with his forehead on his arms. Jaehwan would swear he has fallen asleep, but when he stands up to put the dirty dishes into the sink and brushes his fingers over the nape of Sanghyuk’s neck, Sanghyuk takes a sharp breath and straightens, his lips stretching into a smile as he angles his head to the side, wanting more of the little touch which Jaehwan happily grants him in exchange for his cuteness. Sanghyuk then steps closer to Jaehwan, his arms snaking around Jaehwan’s middle, and Jaehwan wonders when exactly Sanghyuk grew up to be so  _big_  that he feels weirdly uncomfortable hugging him.

“You’re not going home today, are you?” Jaehwan asks with his face buried into Sanghyuk’s hair that smells of his own shampoo, but it smells differently on Sanghyuk than it does on him, and he’s not sure if he likes it.

“I am,” Sanghyuk mumbles against Jaehwan’s shoulder. “I haven’t been home for the last two weeks. Besides,” he pulls back to look at Jaehwan, his gaze lingering on his lips, “it’s nearly impossible to study with you around.”

“I’d say let’s cut the late-night game battles, but there’s no way I’m going to do that,” Jaehwan replies with a smirk.

“Thought so.”

Sanghyuk’s lips are on Jaehwan’s in a second, kissing him softly, making him taste the Nutella on Sanghyuk’s tongue, and he frowns–it’s sickeningly sweet, even to him, and he has no idea why he dislikes that, because he would kill for a kiss that tastes of pure sugar any other time.

The coffee machine stops whirring, and that’s what makes Jaehwan pull back with a peck to Sanghyuk’s temple as he takes two mugs from the cupboard and fills them.

“You’re going to be late,” Sanghyuk says, stirring some milk into his coffee.

Jaehwan glances at the clock on the wall.

“I’ll just take the subway.”

 

 

Jaehwan rarely uses public transportation. He made walking to the university and now, a year later, to his workplace a habit out of sheer necessity: he didn’t have much pocket money to spend and buying passes was something he considered negligible enough to keep the money to himself instead.

So most of the time, Jaehwan walks. He likes walking by himself; sometimes with his earphones in, humming the songs he listens to, and sometimes without them to be able to hear the city wake up. It’s the only time he can experience real tranquillity in the busy downtown.

Tranquillity is nowhere to be found this morning. Sanghyuk was right–he’s already late for work and he mutters some curses under his breath as he runs towards the subway. It’s not that he’s fond of his job as an assistant of the assistant of the attorney for whom he works, but it’s his only source of income and with Sanghyuk practically having moved in with him, he really needs that money.

He quickly buys a ticket and validates it, races down the escalator, almost knocking over an elderly lady and apologizing loudly, jumping from the platform right into the vehicle exactly half a second before the doors close and the back of his jacket gets caught between them. Someone notices the incident and giggles at it–Jaehwan can hear it but can’t see who it is until they reach the next station where the doors let him go and he squeezes through the mass of bodies to support himself by a handrail. He notices, then, a young man glancing at him with big, round, dark eyes and a smile: wide and happy, but a second later it turns into a frown as the boy worries his lower lip between his teeth, averting his eye and moving farther into the crowd until he gets completely hidden by all the sleepy students and grumpy businessmen.

Jaehwan stands astonished for only a moment before he calls out: “Hongbin? Hongbin! Lee Hongbin!”

He doesn’t get an answer, only a few irritated looks by people who were about to nap a little before work or school, but Jaehwan tries to fight his way to Hongbin through suits and uniforms, briefcases and backpacks. The doors open again and he tries to see if Hongbin gets off, but he can’t, and the two men he gets sandwiched between prevent him from running after the boy.

Not that he’d want to run after him, anyway.

(But he definitely would.)

 

 

Jaehwan has never been as distracted at work as he is that day.

He successfully destroys an entire folder’s worth of Very Important Documents in the paper shredder, spills boiling hot coffee on one of his colleagues’ shirt, and manages to let a virus through the firewall of his computer.

Even so, he miraculously avoids getting fired in the end, but that’s all thanks to his stuttered-out supplications and probably very pitiful expression. He feels like he was beaten up–he’s tired and upset on his way home.

He expects Sanghyuk to greet him with a kiss and maybe finally chase his thoughts of Hongbin away when he opens the door to his place, but when he sees no one slouching over the couch eating too-delicious-to-be-good takeout, he pretty much feels like he will fall apart.

And so he does.

Jaehwan slams the door after him and throws his backpack on the couch, thuds down on the carpet to lie on his back. He looks at the ugly lamp above his head and the cobwebs connecting it to all the corners of the room, and thinks that Hongbin would now be yelling at him to “take that goddamn broom and get them off”, and smiles. He’d tell Hongbin that later he would get them off but “let’s play something now”, and Hongbin would huff at that but let himself be dragged into a game he wouldn’t want to stop playing until both of them pass out from exhaustion in the middle of the night.

He just wants to disappear.

He pulls out his phone from his pocket and goes through the names, pushing the Call button once he finds the person he was looking for.

Dial tone.

Dial tone.

Dial tone.

Voicemail.

 

 

“Hyung, are you really okay?” Sanghyuk asks, practically kicking the door open when he arrives. “I’m not going to buy the shit that you just wanted to see me.”

“I’m okay, I told you,” Jaehwan says, staring at the floor so his eyes won’t betray him, even though he knows this probably looks more suspicious than anything else.

“You’re making me worried.”

Jaehwan glances up at his boyfriend, scanning his eyes for worry and he finds it: it shines brighter than the moon outside; making Jaehwan feel like the ray of it is stabbing him, poking a hole through his body right where his heart is.

Or where it should be, if he weren’t a disgusting, heartless vermin.

Sanghyuk puts his hands on Jaehwan’s shoulders gently, but in an urging manner to make him confess.

“I’ve just had a shitty day,” Jaehwan sighs. “Nothing went the way it should have.”

It’s true–-Jaehwan notices the intensity of Sanghyuk’s worry subsiding as he sees the corners of his lips curl up a little in a loving smile that offers help and shelter where Jaehwan can go to if he feels messed up.

And he feels more than messed up right now.

He doesn’t remember how they ended up in bed forty minutes after he kissed Sanghyuk, but he supposes it doesn’t even matter. He swallows Sanghyuk’s moans as he lets his tongue slide into Sanghyuk’s mouth, because the sounds would break the illusion and drag him back to reality. He keeps his eyes shut, no matter that it’s dark in the room; thrusts forward and pulls back, wipes the sweaty locks away from his face and bites down on Sanghyuk’s neck.

Two hands on his back, ten blunt nails scraping at the soft skin–-Jaehwan groans so loudly he almost feels embarrassed, but there’s no opportunity: Sanghyuk scratches painful trails down to his hips, and Jaehwan stills.

Sanghyuk never does that, his nails never sink into his flesh,  _never ever_ –-once he said it’s because he wouldn’t want his back to be clawed at either. But there was one person who always did that to Jaehwan to the point he was actually bleeding; that person spent some minutes cleaning the scratches after sex, putting some disinfectant on them and trying to kiss them better even if Jaehwan told him it was okay and he was going to survive and anyway, as long as it was because of the pleasure he caused, he was okay with it.

He remembers how Hongbin felt under him and it was so much different than Sanghyuk: a lot smaller figure, thin thighs and tiny fingers, broader shoulders and shaky lips, damp hair curly from sweat, tickling Jaehwan’s nose when he nuzzled his neck.

Hongbin used his own conditioner even when he washed his hair with Jaehwan’s shampoo and he never had Nutella bread for breakfast but was stealing cereal from Jaehwan’s bowl until Jaehwan got annoyed enough to pour some into a clean bowl for himself.

Jaehwan opens his eyes, sees the outlines of Sanghyuk’s face, and suddenly hears the ragged breaths that escape the boy’s mouth followed by his own panting. Sanghyuk looks beautiful with the thin layer of sweat on his forehead, his pitch-black eyes glinting and parted lips shining from the kisses, all of him covered in dark silver as some light from the street lamps seeps into the bedroom through the frayed curtains. He looks gorgeous, ethereal even–-handsome and cute, but he’s not the one Jaehwan was expecting to see under him when he opened his eyes and he wants to strangle himself for feeling disappointed.

“What’s wrong?” Sanghyuk asks, one of his hands cupping Jaehwan’s face.

Jaehwan rests a trembly hand next to Sanghyuk’s head and twirls a lock of his hair around his fingers, suppressing angry tears, wondering how he can have someone as precious as Sanghyuk in his life when he’s a revolting human being thinking of someone else when he’s spending the most intimate moments a couple can with a boy that cares about him more than anybody.

Jaehwan lies down next to Sanghyuk who now props himself up on one elbow, looking down at Jaehwan with his eyebrows knit–-so concernedly it makes Jaehwan feel nauseous.

Jaehwan reaches out, winds an arm around Sanghyuk’s neck and pulls him as close as he can, hugging him so tightly it must be inconvenient, but he doesn’t care, because that’s the least Sanghyuk deserves and the most Jaehwan can give.

 

 

Only when he finally arrives to the room he rents does Hongbin notice the little icon on his phone’s screen. He taps it and taps again when he hears the voice of a woman kindly telling him that he has a voicemail message, and lifts the device to his ear, quite baffled.

There’s silence for a few moments, but then–-

**_Hongbin-ah? I… It’s-it’s Jaehwan. I’m not even sure if you’re still using this number. I… I saw you today. I think. I’m sure. And I think you saw me too. I just wanted to tell you this one thing… I wanted to tell you that… I’m sorry about everything and I know we can’t do anything about it… I can’t make it up to you. So… I know I’m late with this, but… I love you, Hongbin._ **

Repeat.

**_I love you, Hongbin._ **

Repeat.

**_I love you–_ **

Delete.


	2. Prequel: Words

Jaehwan hadn’t known the power of words until he met Hongbin.

 

Because Hongbin’s shaky words when he asked for Jaehwan’s number were the ones that made Jaehwan smile so bright that it reflected off Hongbin’s face: dimples and snow white teeth, eyes scanning all of Jaehwan’s face with his lashes fluttering excitedly.

 

And Hongbin’s shy question when he asked Jaehwan in front of the entrance of his apartment building if it was okay to kiss him was the reason for Jaehwan to nod and lean in to taste his lips chastely at first, their noses bumping and their teeth clashing when Hongbin opened his mouth for him. That was why Jaehwan wound an arm around Hongbin’s waist and another around his neck while Hongbin stood awkwardly in his embrace, the fingers of his left hand curling around the hem of Jaehwan’s jacket and staying there until Jaehwan dropped his right hand and laced their fingers together.

 

Hongbin’s mumbled endearments were the things that made Jaehwan rise from the ground when he was ready to give up, when he couldn’t see his future clearly, when he didn’t know if he had a future at all, when he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to make it through university, through the hard months of looking for a job after he graduated–through life itself. Hongbin was always there for him and praised him; he made the word ‘perfect’ fall from above and settle on Jaehwan’s nerves like cherry blossom petals that float on top of the clear water of a brook.

 

Hongbin’s words came in a million different forms: screams and whispers, yells and mumbles; fibs and jokes, questions and confessions.

 

His most important words, however, weren’t directed at Jaehwan’s ears—they spilled from his lips right onto Jaehwan’s bare skin.

 

Hongbin’s mouth traced a line from his throat down his sternum; slow, gentle, warm touches—he stopped where Jaehwan’s breastbone ended, at the deepest point, and pressed a kiss there. He drew back a little, only so much that Jaehwan could still feel his lips lingering above that spot, his breath was hot and his husky voice vibrated in Jaehwan’s chest as he whispered: “I love you”.

 

And Jaehwan’s fingers halted in his hair; he froze. Hongbin looked up, up from the patch of skin he had worshipped as if it was a sacred relic a second before, up into Jaehwan’s eyes and there it was: anticipation glinting in his irises like sunlight on a knife’s edge—half a minute; only that much did it last before it died out when Hongbin realized he was not going to get an answer.

 

Jaehwan cupped his face then, pulled him up and kissed him, kissed him for long minutes, for long hours; fingers running up and down every single part of Hongbin’s body like they would on a piano, played the song of quiet words, needy mewls and impatient growls until, in the end, Hongbin ended up heaving into the crook of his neck, heart beating fast against Jaehwan’s palm. He glanced up at Jaehwan, his eyes pleading, saying ‘You can still make it up to me’, and Jaehwan understood the unspoken words, saw them in the dilated pupils, but he couldn’t say what he was supposed to, what he should have felt.

 

Hongbin let go of him, rolled onto his side, turned his back on Jaehwan. Silence so thick and heavy fell between them it made it hard to breathe, and in the silence Jaehwan lay down, as close to Hongbin as he could, kissed the now cold skin of his shoulder tentatively, making Hongbin let out a small sigh and move his shoulder back out of instinct, like a cat that’s angry with his owner but still starts to purr when he gets petted.

 

The flame that Jaehwan thought would burn until the end of time had flared for only a few months before he blew it out.

 

Because words are most powerful when they mean you are willing to give all of you to someone who has already given you more than what they ever had.

 

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to talk to me about any of my stories or just vixx in general on [tumblr](http://hongbab.tumblr.com/), [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/hongbab) or [aff](http://www.asianfanfics.com/profile/view/1061753) ♡ please support me on [ko-fi.com](https://ko-fi.com/hongbab) if you can ♡


End file.
